7 April 1970

Tuesday night
7 April 1970

This is the first letter I’ve written since last Saturday.  This is first time I’ve really felt like writing.  We’ve moved thrice since then and all have been long, tiring walks!! 

Yesterday and today we moved across white sand dunes at noontime under a glaring sun!  Last night I had a bit of a sun burn.  This afternoon we’ve set up in a very nice, prosperous hamlet.  It is surrounded by fertile fields of ripe rice which they are harvesting.  They have, also, fields of vegetables, and we found a field of ripe cucumbers!  Boy, were they good!!

I don’t know just how long we’ll be here, but I expect we’ll move on tomorrow.

I got some mail today on the re-supply, a letter and some newspapers.

Each day I’m out here with the grunts I realize more just how little good we are doing.  There are supposed to be lots of VC around, but we just can’t ever catch them!  We’ve had more casualties than we can claim to have inflicted!  Also, I’ve done absolutely nothing!!  In the 3 weeks I’ve been a  FAC, I’ve done my job one time!  One time I’ve controlled a flight of CAS!!!!

The kids in these hamlets are professional beggars!  Ha.  All they know is to ask for cigarettes and food!  I took a picture of one small boy who was "selling" water for cigarettes.  I got another good picture of an old woman being doctored by our corpsman.  She had a bad sore on her hand and he cleaned it up and dressed it.

The best thing of all about being in the hamlet is that the VC probably won’t attack us because they would hurt the civilians - not that the VC particularly care about the people.